


ghost unlaid

by inktwice (Inkjade)



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Jesper learns some tact, Kaz Brekker outsmarts himself, Not A Fix-It, PTSD, Sort Of, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, but sort of a resolution, homecomings, not exactly fluff, since it's Kaz, which become semi-healthy coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 18:52:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16310780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkjade/pseuds/inktwice
Summary: Set post-TCK. Kaz and Jesper have to take shelter from a storm on the way back to Ketterdam from the Fahey farm, and end up in the last place Kaz ever wanted to go back to.





	ghost unlaid

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I can't remember how far away Jesper's farm would have been from the Rietveld farm, but for the purposes of this story, and because I kind of love the idea that they grew up within the same general area, they're within a few days' walking distance from each other.

It was the kind of day made for paperwork.

Sunlight fell down like hard metal sheets through a scattered bank of clouds racing seaward. It sharpened the edges of everything it struck: the crumbling wheelruts of the road, the spiky tops of the seeding barley, the branches of trees. The standing puddles the clouds had dropped on their way elsewhere.

The cart’s rotting boards looked like they could cut. Even the damn mud threw up a glare as it swallowed the wheel.

There was a whipcrack _snap_ and the cart jerked. He heaved at the back of it. His bad leg sent up a sliver of pain like a blade; it too seemed sharper in the sunlight. The cart rocked upward, then back again, settling even deeper into the mud.

Paperwork in the Slat, with all the attendant sounds and smells and Anika batting her eyes at him every time she came in to report, sounded like a day off.

“Any luck,” Jesper called. He hadn’t managed to inflect a question properly the whole trip, like his fight with Wylan had stolen his interest in everything.

“You’d have noticed,” Kaz replied.

He straightened, dug at a blister on his knuckles. Scrubbed at mud rubbed so deeply into his palms he could see all the lines crossing them standing out like filthy rivers on a map. He surprised himself by snorting a laugh.

“I’d love to know what the Bastard of the Barrel has found to laugh at in _this_ situation,” Jesper said from beside him. “It took us less than two days to get to my da’s farm; at this rate it’s going to take us a week to get back to Ketterdam. What’s so funny?”

Kaz raised a brow and turned one palm outward. Jesper stared at it, then at Kaz’s face, his expression suggesting he was beginning to worry about the company he was keeping out here in the saints-forsaken Kerch countryside. Kaz watched the irony of it dawn on him in a startled lift of dark brows.

“Dirtyhands,” Jesper said flatly.

The horse blew impatiently. Jesper blinked down at his hand. Kaz brushed at it again, and examined the mudhole that had swallowed their back wheel. They were well and truly stuck. He turned, and bent to look at the axle, ignoring the twinge from his leg and the wheeze of laughter from behind him.

“I bet you never imagined it would have such a literal application,” Jesper gasped, and Kaz grinned in the shadow of the cart, where only the old horse Colm Fahey had lent them could see him.

  
***

“We’re going to die out here like rats in a flood,” Jesper said.

His good mood had lasted only until the rain had started up again. He sat on his father’s horse like a sack of soaked flour, the reins slack in one fist. Kaz had opted to walk. The mud might be making a misery of his leg, but not nearly as much misery as sitting in the saddle would. He was a Barrel boss, not a jockey.

At least they were making better time without the cart to slow them down, though the horse looked rather put out at having to carry their belongings and Jesper on its back. And the rain was coming heavier; it looked like it planned to stay that way for a while. Autumn in Kerch was a soggy season.

“Rats swim when it floods,” Kaz said, and wished it unsaid immediately afterward. There was no point responding to Jesper when he got in this mood: you just let him ramble on until he ran out of whine.

“Seriously. _That’s_ what you—” Jesper glowered down at him. “ _Rats swim_. Well, apparently Dregs don’t, Kaz. We walk. And then we drown in some saints-forsaken sinkhole masquerading as a puddle—”

“Here,” Kaz said, and pointed, stemming the inevitable tirade of complaint. His heart gave a hard thump up in his throat. He dug his gloves out of the pocket of his coat. That was enough time barehanded today.

Jesper reined the horse to a stop and peered down at the track branching off the road to Ketterdam. It barely deserved the name: it was overrun with grass and bramble, lumpy and half-hidden in the hedges running alongside it. Jesper stared at him again. The rain made his eyes squint. He said nothing for a long moment. Kaz gave him a few more of those uncomfortably hard heartbeats to think it over, and then walked out onto the track, toward the distant hint of a roofline. It was a while before he heard the horse behind him.

“Are we about to accost some humble Kerch farmer and his wife for a place to sleep tonight?” Jesper called.

“No.”

Not unless the ghosts counted, that was. Kaz didn’t think they’d mind.

They’d spent three days at Colm Fahey’s farm, sorting out a problem with a local gang that had turned out to be not much of a problem at all, just an excuse for Jesper to get out of Ketterdam and Colm to see his son. Wylan had cajoled, then pleaded, then bribed Kaz to go along. Neither had mentioned the argument that half Wylan’s servants had overheard, or the fact that Jes had spent the next day bleeding money onto the tables at the Red Lady and drinking half his weight in whiskey. Jesper had told his father Wylan was ‘wonderful’ without a flicker of guilt when Colm had asked. Repeatedly.

It was nothing to Kaz. Except it was. He hadn’t decided if he was getting soft, or just honest. Either was a problem.

This was also a problem. The sort that he could have avoided. Except the carriage had not come back and neither of them had wanted to wait for it; except the rain had washed out the main road and left them on one that dragged them half out of their way. Except he still hadn’t sold one of the properties he’d bought up. Except his leg was bad and getting worse, and he’d rather not sleep on the wet ground.

Except for the sinking feeling that he’d had this planned somewhere underneath, from the moment Wylan had asked him to keep Jes out of too much trouble on a short trip into the Kerch countryside-- deep enough that he hadn’t even known it was a plan, and now it was the only option.

He was never leaving Ketterdam again.

***

Up close, it barely looked like the house he’d spent the first eight years of his life living in. It was too small. The roof was sagging. The door was crooked on its hinges.

“Come on,” Kaz muttered, and shoved it open. His hair dripped into his eyes.

“I wonder how many vermin we’ll be sharing this warm and cozy bed with,” Jesper said from behind him.

“You’re welcome to sleep in the yard,” Kaz said. He could hear the strangeness in his voice. The hearth was dark, blackened halfway up the chimney. The rafters were caked with soot. The table was gone. It wasn’t the same place at all. He wasn’t the same boy at all. It was fine. He kicked the door shut and dropped his pack, heading for the woodshed door behind the kitchen.

“I’ll make do.” Jesper followed him. Kaz turned to glare him back. Jesper squinted again, then blinked several times, his mouth opening and closing more than once. “Kaz. Are you…you’re…um. Right. Right! I’ll go make sure Horse is bedding down comfortably in all that rotting hay, shall I?”

He didn’t move. Kaz breathed out until he was still, then raised an eyebrow. “Right,” Jesper said again, and spun on a heel.

The wood that was left was thin and soft, but dry. He brought it in and piled it up, wondering, trying not to wonder, if it had been here for the last ten years, the dregs of every year’s cutting, or if some other family had cut it and left it. Wondering and trying not to wonder as he pulled off his gloves and scraped at the flint who else had lived here before he’d bought it cheap three years ago; who had cooked and slept and worked here and thought of it as home. The thought made him want to set fire to the rafters, to sweep through the rooms burning everything his hands could touch. Maybe that was why he had bought it: so he could burn it down. He blew at a wisp of flame until it caught and sat back on the stones, rubbed at his leg. His fingers found grooves in the slate.

 _Jordie_ , scraped in with a carving knife over many nights. _Kaz_.

Their da had shouted at them for dulling the knife and then carved both of their names into a plank he had hung over their bedroom door the next night when they were doing extra chores as punishment.

It was the same place.

For a second, with his bare, rain-pruned fingertips against his brother’s name, he was the same boy, all his world bounded by the fields outside and his father’s callused hands and his brother’s stupid, boundless optimism.

Their da had taught them both their letters right here, sitting close for the light and the heat. He and Jordie had cooked pancakes on the stones one winter when they’d gotten too hot to touch, and eaten them burned, gritty with dirt and sticky with soot, grinning like idiots over the novelty. All three of them had curled up here on the coldest nights, bundled in blankets. Their father would snore so loud it felt like the floorboards shook, and they’d laugh until they were breathless and red-faced when he woke himself up with the noise.

It came clawing up from his guts, a tide of memory and rage and grief. Breaking his leg had hurt less. He drew a sharp breath and heaved himself to his feet, fists clenched. He couldn’t make himself move any farther than that. He was afraid of what else he’d see.

“Kaz.”

“ _What_ ,” he snarled, whirling. Jesper took a step back and gaped at him. “I—you’re—are you—here.” He offered a lumpy roll of bread with cheese on top of it. “Dinner.”

“I’m not hungry. You eat it.”

He could walk out: Jesper wouldn’t follow him. He could haul himself up onto that stupid horse’s back and head for Ketterdam in the dark. He could spend the rest of his life pulling job after job, running the Dregs from the Slat, building an empire and burning it down as an endless line of employees filed in and out of his office.

He turned to stare at the fire he’d built. It was barely big enough to burn down a pile of dried up kindling.

He still couldn’t look at the rest of the house. The tide was in his chest, his throat, raking razors over his insides. He ground his teeth and swallowed it down. It tasted worse than the harbor water. Jordie came to stand next to him, dangling that sad sandwich from one hand. He never did know when to back off.

Jesper. _Jesper_.

“I told Wy I wanted to come work for the Dregs again,” Jesper said quietly. It was unexpected enough that Kaz blinked. “Not—not all the time. Not like before. But sometimes. If you wanted me to.” He frowned at the fire. “Hot baths and salad forks are nice, but—I don’t—I’m _useless_ , Kaz. I play the markets a little, and I’ve gotten better at Fabrikating, and I can help Wy run his businesses, but it’s not me. I’m bored. I need to do more than that. We broke Kuwei out of the Ice Court and took down Van Eck and Pekka Rollins and stood off half of Ketterdam, and now I’m a personal assistant.”

It made sense, in a way. And none, in other ways. “I bet he took that well.”

Jesper barked a laugh. “Oh yes. Words were had. Fragile things were thrown. I said some things I really wish I hadn’t. I think he did too.” He frowned at the fire again. “At least, I hope he did.” He sighed, and sat, rubbing a hand over his head. “What if I’m just irredeemably selfish and impulsive?”

“Probably you are,” Kaz murmured. Jesper laughed again, shoulders hunching. Kaz levered himself down to sit, swallowing the tide that rose to meet him. “You think Wylan didn’t know that? He seems to love you anyway.”

“I suppose that counts for something.”

It counted for a lot of things, but Jesper had never been terribly good at math. Kaz shrugged. Wylan was smart, in a bookish sort of way, and he’d gotten smart in other ways before they’d taken his father down. Wylan would probably come around, find some sort of compromise. He had never figured Jesper would be able to stay in one place for too long: he was too restless.

He was very like Jordie had been.

“Dirtyhands,” Jesper murmured. He was staring at the slates. At the names. Kaz ignored the urge to reach for his gloves. “The Bastard of the Barrel. But you grew up here, didn’t you. Jordie was your brother?”

It was still hard to hear the name. “Yes,” he said.

Jesper picked at the cheese, hunching a little farther in on himself. “Are you going to punch me if I ask you what happened to him?”

Maybe. He felt it again, that urge to set the whole place on fire and walk away. He’d never told anyone. Almost had, Inej, who had laid herself open when he was trapped in his weakness and pulled him out with nothing but words and courage. He could burn this down now, this fragile peace, burn it down with words and walk away. She’d taught him something else. He hadn’t believed he’d learned it. But they were here, in this damn house, and he was the reason they were here.

“Our father died in a plow accident when I was eight,” he said, and felt, more than saw, Jesper startle next to him. “We sold the farm, went to Ketterdam. It didn’t take two weeks for someone to con us out of every penny.”

“Pekka Rollins,” Jesper breathed.

“He called himself something else at the time.”

“I always wondered why you had it out for him so bad. I mean, let’s be honest, you had it out for _everyone_ —but Pekka was the only one I ever saw rattle you.”

“Well.” Kaz picked at the blister on his knuckle again, then scowled at the tell. “Now you know why.”

Jesper laid back, resting his head on his arms. “And your brother…?”

He stared at the fire. He didn’t know if he could say it. It felt like half of the harbor was in his chest.

 _It isn’t easy for me either, you know_. He drew a breath.

“Queen’s Lady Plague,” he heard himself say, the words sounding oddly hollow, as if they came from the other side of the room. Jesper made a small sound. “We were sleeping rough. We both caught it. It killed Jordie.”

Jesper was silent. A log popped. The rain was still coming down, rattling against the boards, dripping from someplace in the eaves. “And what happened to you,” he whispered. His eyes were shut. It was the only reason Kaz could stay still.

“I lived,” he said lightly. Jesper’s eyes opened. He looked disappointed. Kaz wanted to punch the look off his face. He settled for pulling on his gloves, feeling Jesper’s eyes on him like brands _. It isn’t easy for me either._

He couldn’t.

But the Bastard of the Barrel didn’t roll over and whimper. Get up, he thought, and braced his gloved hands on the floor, staring down at his own name scratched into stone. Finish it.

“The bodymen must have thought we were both corpses,” he said through a thick mouthful of Ketterdam harbor. “I woke up next to my brother’s on Reaper’s Barge. I swam back.”

He was dimly glad he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. His heart was pounding right up in his throat, choking him. He dug his fingers into the floorboards and shut his eyes, fighting the rise of the water and the razor tide of memory, the cold wet give of rotting skin against his, Jordie’s cloudy dead stare as he floated away.

“ _Saints_ ,” Jesper breathed, his voice gone high and strained, and Kaz bit his tongue to keep from snarling something at him to send him away. “And then you spent the next nine years plotting how to pull down everything Pekka Rollins ever built.” He rubbed at his face. His eyes were glistening. Kaz dug harder into the floorboards, until his fingers ached. “Only you, Brekker. I don’t know how in nine hells you waited that long. I’d have strung him up by his toes long since.”

He’d had to suffer.

“Too quick.”

Jesper sat up. “Yeah. Still. You’re more than a little terrifying.”

Kaz made his hands relax before Jesper could notice how he’d dug his fingers into the boards. “That isn’t a bad thing in this line of work, Jes.”

“Oh, I know it isn’t. We traded on it enough, didn’t we?” He bit at his lip, reached to touch the _J_ on the slate in front of him, then pulled back. “Did it help?”

Saints, why was it he ended up surrounded by people who wanted to _talk_ so much. He sighed. “Did it help with what, Jes.”

Jesper nodded at his gloved hands.

It was worse than waking up hooded and stuffed into a prisoner’s wagon surrounded by bodies, knowing he’d fainted in front of all of them, even if only one of them had noticed. It was worse than waiting for Inej’s response when her parents stepped off the ship. It was almost worse than skin against his skin. It was exactly the same as that, in fact; an awful combination of revulsion and longing that made him shudder. “What do you think,” he growled. But Jesper didn’t flinch back this time. In fact he leaned closer. Maybe he was going to get to punch someone after all.

“I think if revenge didn’t help, and being in love didn’t help—oh don’t bother,” he snapped, waving a hand to silence the startled objection Kaz was about to make. “There’s nobody who knew you two who didn’t know _that_ , Kaz, the two of you were about as subtle as one of Wylan’s bombs—and if taking over the Dregs, and beating Van Eck and the damn _Council of Tides_ didn’t help, and being the richest Barrel boss in Ketterdam doesn’t help, maybe, just maybe, you ought to consider trying something new. That’s what I _think_ , Brekker.”

“What do you want me to do, Jes?” Kaz snarled. He shoved himself to his feet. He would rather spend the rest of the night in the barn. At least that way he might get some sleep. “Tear my hair? Cover my head in ash? Cry? Build a memorial? What do you think will fix using my brother’s rotting body as a raft while I kicked my way across Ketterdam harbor?”

“Saints,” Jesper murmured again, and stood too. He looked startled and strange. “Kaz, I—”

Kaz knocked his outstretched hand away.

“This is how it is! This is how _I_ am!” He was shouting. He didn’t remember deciding to do that. He sucked in a deep, uneven breath and looked for his cane. It was across the room, against the threshold to his and Jordie’s bedroom. The plank with their names was gone. He swallowed down a bizarre surge of disappointment. “Tell me what helps with that,” he sighed.

Jesper looked at him from the other side of the slate pavings on the hearth. His expression was so sad. “Kaz,” he said, and bit his lip. “Do you honestly not—Kaz.”

“ _What_.”

“You already are,” Jesper said.

“What?”

Jesper rubbed at the back of his neck and gestured at his face. “You’ve been crying since you walked in the door, Kaz,” he said quietly.

It took too long for him to understand what Jesper was saying. He stood like there like an idiot while it sunk in, rearranging the oddness of Jesper’s staring and fleeing and tentativeness into something that made sense. He had a sudden, vivid image of the filthy water of Ketterdam harbor spilling out of his seams, like a waterlogged doll disintegrating on a pier, too sodden to contain any more and too worn to hold together.

 _Weak_.

He snatched up his cane and shoved his way outside.

Jesper didn’t try to stop him.

The wind had risen; the rain drove into his face. He could feel the difference out here: cold wet verses warm wet. He hobbled through a sea of mud toward the barn, but stopped before he got halfway there: he’d spent half his days there with Jordie and Da, sifting chaff or baling hay or leaping from the loft—

He couldn’t even see the fields, but he could see his father’s guts spread across two rows of corn seedlings and his brother kneeling by the plow clutching at his head as though he could pull the sight out with his fingers.

The rope swing in the big oak had rotted to string. The rock wall was starting to collapse. His father’s gravestone was twenty-eight steps from the northern corner, hidden in the apple orchard.

He was drowning in memories. There wasn’t enough air between them to breathe.

A gust pushed him half off his feet. He braced the cane in the mud and turned into it. Fighting the wind felt good: it was the only thing out here he _could_ fight. He let it scrub his face, shivering. It was impossible to tell the water coming down on him from the water rising inside him. It was all the same. It didn’t matter. He gripped the cane, and felt the leather of his gloves catch on the metal, and huffed.

It _all_ mattered. Even now. It was all he’d had for ten years. All he’d carried with him out of the harbor. He didn’t know how to put it down.

_Try something new._

How in nine hells was he supposed to do that?

_You already are._

“Shut up, Jordie,” he muttered. “Saints-- _Jesper_. Whoever.”

_The city is winning so far, Kaz._

“But we’ll see who wins in the end, won’t we,” he rasped, and drew a gasping, desperate breath that tasted like clean rain and apples, and scrubbed at his face. He was going to catch cold standing out here in the rain sniveling like a kid. Maybe he’d get firepox again. Wouldn’t that be a joke?

Jesper was pretending not to look out the window; the firelight framed him against the glass, peering out, leaning against the wall in his nothing-to-see-here pose that he’d never quite perfected. It looked warm in there. He swiped at his face again with his sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” he said. To Jordie or to Da, he wasn’t’ sure: neither of them, he knew, would recognize the monster he’d made of himself. Maybe it was even to the stupid, gullible kid he’d been once.

It didn’t really matter. All that mattered was what came next.

***

Jesper looked like a boy waiting for a court verdict when he let himself back inside: teetering between dread and hope and beginning to get a little seasick over the swings. Kaz peeled himself out of his sodden coat and hung it on the peg by the fireplace in silence, ignoring Jes’s hovering. His face was stinging. His ears felt like little blocks of ice. He was dripping all over everything. He left the gloves on: he’d had enough for today. Everything inside him felt unmoored.

He sat on the floor and tore off a chunk of Jesper’s sandwich with his teeth. After a few minutes Jesper came and sat a safe distance away.

“I’m glad you decided not to make me walk back to Ketterdam,” Jesper said finally.

Kaz finished the sandwich and let himself fall flat. The fire was beginning to heat the room. The warm slate against his knee felt good. “It did cross my mind.”

“Of course it did. More than once, I’m sure,” Jesper muttered, and flopped backwards too, knocking the back of his skull against the floorboards. “Ow.”

They lay there, listening to the wood pop and squeal as it burned. Kaz could feel Jesper working up to some question he wouldn’t want to answer, or be able to answer. He let his head tip so he could see the expression on Jesper’s face.

“There’ll always be a place for you in the Dregs,” he said, and bit the inside of his cheek against a smile at the confounded look on Jes’s face. “In fact, I’ve been working on a side project for Inej that I could use both you and Wylan for. If you wanted.”

For the third time that day, Jesper gaped at him like a fish hauled up into the air; then he blinked up at the ceiling and swallowed a few times.

“Where do I sign?”

Kaz slid the folding knife out of his pocket, flicked the blade out, and held it out, handle first.

“Right on that stone should do,” he said, and grinned when Jesper snorted delighted laughter.

 

 

 


End file.
